


Heard the Owl's Cry

by Vampiric_Charms



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, M/M, PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 02:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8731945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vampiric_Charms/pseuds/Vampiric_Charms
Summary: Things are not always to be expected.  Sometimes things are bad, while others may be worse than initially thought.  And sometimes hair just has to be cut.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RowanBaines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowanBaines/gifts).



> Warning on here: This deals with PTSD and suicide ideation (both on Maedhros’s part). I will try, one day, not to be quite so depressing. Today is not that day, though I did attempt to turn it around near the end. This is set after his rescue.
> 
> This is a gift for **RowanBaines** , and was written rather quickly so I could get it finished sooner rather than later. I hope you enjoy it, lovely!

 

“You don’t have any awful colors in there, right?”

Fingon playfully swatted Maedhros’s hand away from the little woven basket, laughing and pulling him again to sit before his crossed legs in the grass, facing away so his back was to Fingon’s front.  “Of course I don’t.  All scarlet, as I’ve already said.  See?”  He picked up the basket and held it forward for a moment before bringing it around to place at his side to keep in easy reach.

Maedhros just huffed impatiently, turning in an attempt to get a closer look.  A mass of ribbons could just be glimpsed before Fingon grabbed the back of his head and pointed it straight once more.  “I promise,” he said, “all red.  No greens or blues or purples to clash with this lovely hair.”

They fell silent, listening to the breeze picking through the leaves of nearby trees and scuttling through the field.  Fingon looked wistfully at the small selection of items beside him, picking a boar-bristled brush and gathering up a section of Maedhros’s hair to settle against his shoulder blade.  The bristles snagged against tangles not touched in weeks, and Fingon frowned as he battled briefly with them.

“Just cut it, Finno,” Maedhros murmured, his voice tired as he stared ahead listlessly.  “Truly, I do not see the point in this exercise.  It is futile as it is tedious.  Cut it off again.”

Fingon picked up a snared bunch of hair into his fist and attacked it with the brush, unwilling to let the copper strands be lost.  “It is only becoming such a matted mess,” he grumbled, “because you do not care for it.”

Maedhros didn’t respond.  Fingon glanced around toward his face, but the view was obscured by that knotted mass of hair as it fluffed and fell from the brush.  He sighed and continued his work.  It had been a long while since he had been in his cousin’s company, not since Maedhros had been deemed well enough to travel and his brothers had swept him away to their own camp for continued recovery.  When Fingon had finally broken away from his own responsibilities, he had not even asked permission before coming here to find Maedhros slipping away once more, lost to his thoughts as his brothers hustled around him.

It had hurt him horribly to see Maedhros sitting in a chair beside his bed, a book open and forgotten on his lap as he gazed off, unfocused, his mind gone to something unknown.  Maglor had told him in hushed undertones that he hadn’t left the tent since his arrival, hadn’t touched food or drink, refused to sleep until he fell from the chair with exhaustion.  Not fading, perhaps, but giving into whatever plague was still left to touch his soul.  

Fingon had tempted him, somehow, to join him outside, out of the stifling mugginess of the tent, away from the smells of dirty bedclothes and a space lived in for too long.  Not far, only just outside the wall of the encampment, and, he said, for enough time for his brother to do a bit of spring cleaning so they would return to a place a bit more cozy.  He’d said it with a bright smile, offering Maedhros an arm he did not take.

Instead of faltering, Fingon had unwrapped a parcel carried with him from home, and patiently asked Maglor for a basket and hairbrush.  Maedhros watched warily, reminding them he wasn’t hungry and did not appreciate being coerced into food.  Fingon had shown him the ribbons, laughing gaily as he could as he said these were certainly not for eating.

Now sunlight streamed down upon them, igniting the hair in Fingon’s hand and making it gleam dully.  Maedhros’s head had been shorn upon his return, and Fingon pursed his lips as the image of such things came and went again.  His hair had grown back healthy and strong, nearing his shoulders while still on Fingolfin’s side of the lake.  Now it was longer, nearly two hands more, and desperately tangled.  He wondered, briefly, if Maedhros had allowed anyone to touch him at all, had allowed anyone to brush this out before it became such a terrible mess.

This was not what Fingon expected when he left to visit.  

The brush snagged against a particularly bad knot, and Maedhros’s head jerked backward.  Fingon immediately loosened his hold on hair and brush, and his cousin’s neck relaxed reflexively.

“I’m sorry!” he rushed to say, placing a hand on Maedhros’s shoulder and leaning around to see his face.  “I will be more gentle, I promise.  I did not mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” Maedhros said.

It was not true, Fingon knew, and he paused to rest his chin there on Maedhros’s shoulder, leaning heavily against his temple.  He took in a deep breath, catching the scent of Maedhros’s skin and clothing wrinkled from days of wear.  After a tense moment, Maedhros loosened his rigid posture just slightly, turning a fraction, only enough to press the very side of his face to Fingon’s.

“I _did_ hurt you,” Fingon murmured.  “Didn’t I?”

“Just a bit,” Maedhros replied, his lips quirking up into the first smile Fingon had seen from him during their time together.  “But it’s all right, I don’t mind.”  There was a beat of silence in which Fingon was about to retort that it mattered a great deal, thank you, whether he was in pain or not, when Maedhros whispered, “I’ve missed you.”

“Oh, my dearest Russandol, I’ve missed you as well.  I’ve missed you _greatly_.”  Fingon nuzzled his nose against the side of Maedhros’s neck, dropping his arms down to wrap around his waist in a loose embrace.  He squeezed his eyes closed, not caring they were within sight of the towers, of the guards.  Of all the Fëanorian brothers.  “Would that I never had to leave you again.”

He felt Maedhros touch his arm, gently tracing a line of muscle hardened over the bone toward his fingers.  Fingon turned his hand upward for Maedhros to thread their fingers together at his own pace, and he did so slowly, his throat bobbing as he swallowed.

“I don’t care to be here any longer, Fingon,” he whispered, his words hiding themselves in Fingon’s hair as Maedhros turned to speak so very softly.

“We can go back,” Fingon started to say, even knowing that was not at all what was being referred to.  His eyes stung with tears, and he blinked them quickly away.  “Would you like to go back inside, love?  We can sit by the stove in your tent, and tend the fire like we used to when we were young.  We can poke at the logs and watch them fall in the grate, and guess at the shapes they’re making.”

Maedhros shook his head, the movement subtle though still noticed.

“Then we shall stay just where we are.”  

Fingon was quiet for a moment, raising a hand to Maedhros’s forehead and sweeping the locks of hair away from his face.  He left his hand there, cradling his cousin’s head, his fingers laced through those hopelessly tangled tresses.  Maedhros’s expression was blank, bland and sightless, and a pit opened in Fingon’s stomach.  “I will stay with you, Nelyo.  All right?  I will not leave this time, not like I allowed you to leave me before.  A time may come when we are forced from one another, but it has not yet come, has it?”  He pressed a quick kiss to what part of Maedhros he could reach - the back corner of his head - and let his lips linger there.  “I will stay here with you.  Please do not leave me just yet.”

“Your father -”

“Will be fine without me,” Fingon interrupted calmly.  “I want to be with _you_.  Not him.  Are you amenable to such an arrangement?”

Maedhros nodded silently and, once again, Fingon felt his throat constrict as he swallowed, as though he were holding something back.  Words he was afraid to speak, perhaps, or tears he had refused to shed since his return.  “I will inform my brothers when we return,” he said instead of whatever else was hinting across his tongue.

Fingon gave him a bright, dazzling smile, even if most of it was obscured by their current position.  “Good,” he murmured, placing one last kiss to Maedhros’s head.  He leaned back, then, lowering his arms and releasing his hold.  “Now, then, let us see what we can do about this hair.”

“I am telling you, Finno, cut it off.  I have no use for the length of it any longer.”

“Such blasphemous words,” Fingon said with a little laugh.  Still, though, he eyed the gleaming brass scissors in the basket with the ribbons.  With an annoyed and rather angry sigh, he snatched them up.  “I am not cutting it all,” he defended immediately when his cousin gave him a triumphant smirk.  “Only the worst bits at the bottom.  Now hold still.”

He did end up trimming quite a bit, as the knots got tighter and tighter as they were brushed through.  In the end, at least, Maedhros’s hair came to a manageable length, and Fingon was able to run his fingers through it without snags to part into sections.  Bit by bit, he braided the scarlet ribbons into copper tresses, weaving them all together.  He paused at the last braid.

Maedhros was eased under his touch, relaxed after so much time with the brush and Fingon’s gentle tugs of his hair.  His eyes were closed, his face tranquil in a way it hadn’t been in so very long.  Fingon grinned.  He raised his hands to the back of his own head to loosen a single braid, an extra one with a spare ribbon of gold for this very purpose.  He slid it away from his own silken tresses, nestling it now into the red hair at his fingertips, beside the scarlet.  It would pass quite unnoticed until the braids were taken down.  

A token of his love.  A silly one, but one nonetheless.  Maedhros would recognize it as such, at any rate.  Perhaps he would even keep it.

“I am finished, dearest,” he said softly, placing a hand on Maedhros’s arm to gently pull him from whatever meditation he had found himself in.  Maedhros opened his eyes and glanced back toward him.  “Would you like to go back now?” Fingon asked.

“I’d like to stay here a little longer.”

“Then I would like that as well.  Maedhros.”

“Yes?”

“I really have missed you.”

Maedhros looked at him again, turning his body to better see.  Fingon saw how his clothing still did not fit how it should, saw the deep purple shadows under his eyes and the lines around his mouth, the creases between his eyebrows.  The long cut on his neck that was only just starting to fade into a scar, the others dotting his face, those mottling the exposed skin around his collar.  

But Maedhros smiled at him, wide and lopsided and tentatively happy, and the fear around Fingon’s heart melted.

He reached out his hand and Maedhros took it.

 


End file.
